


Collapse- Prompt Fill

by captaincravatthecapricious



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Failed Ritual, Fainting, Gen, Jon reads Dune, M/M, Nausea, Post 159- 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28465713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captaincravatthecapricious/pseuds/captaincravatthecapricious
Summary: Jon is a Dune fan.  How can picking up one book change things?  Idea from a tumblr prompt and a post by @roseunspindle on tumblr!
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 8
Kudos: 45





	Collapse- Prompt Fill

**Author's Note:**

> cw all the typical episode 160 stuff and references to nausea and of course manipulation and fainting. Some dialogue from 160, and a quote from Dune, of course!

Jon isn’t sure why he grabbed the book. He’s read it before so it doesn’t hold the same interest it once did. He had to work on that reading habit of his in school, and now he’s managed a few rereads, but he still prefers the unknown and interesting.  
But he did love this book when he read it. He was too young for it, of course. But that hadn’t mattered. He sucked the whole world into his young and greedy mind.  
And now that glossy, second hand cover.... makes him pause over it. He doesn’t know how it survived evictions and his absences. He must have subconsciously stored it out of the way. But he grabs it, with a few statements, and his small collection of clothes into a very battered backpack that he’s sure once belonged to Melanie.  
He wishes he had more books. Maybe once he and Martin reach the train station, he can pick up something else to read. Or maybe he can borrow some books from Martin….  
He stuffs Dune into his backpack. It’s on the top, distending the fabric slightly, straining the zipper as his grandmother had always reprimanded him for when he shoved too many pleasure books into his school bag, (always to read under the desk and he was always inevitably caught and reprimanded again, but what could you do with an inattentive student who still pulled good marks?). 

He boards the train with Martin. Battered and aging backpacks filled with worn clothes and statements and books and granola bars. The station had been loud and busy enough to send Jon reeling with the information spilling off a crowd of people as well as the less eldritch sensory overload. His head aching dully as they settle into their seats.  
Medicine for motion sickness sends him drowsy as soon as it is effective. He spends the time before it works staring queasily out the window, clammy hands holding tightly to Martin as much to sooth his uneasy stomach as to hold Martin in this plain of reality. He nods off, hands still clasped with Martin’s. Wrapped up in the elation of having Martin with him, around him, talking to him…. almost safe. 

He wakes up in a storm of hurried breaths and crashing thoughts…. precarious as the crashing waves that haunted the lonely, but far closer and more oppressive. Statements tumbling with his own crashing thoughts. Fear on his breath. His fear making him Hungry in the nauseous way of autocannibleism.  
He presses his face into Martin, only just then realizing that he’s been using Martin as a pillow. Martin, who is dozing. Martin, who is still a little foggy. The last of the haze burning off with the contact. Jon can see the steam rising between them, mainly and gentle. The sun burning the fog off a meadow in the early morning.  
Jon sits himself up, but stays pressed against Martin. The imprint of Jon slowly thawing Martin as the train gently sways them both.  
Jon doesn’t want to sleep more. He would much prefer to read, but it is still more than a bit of a gamble for him to even medicated. But…. he’s bored.  
Dune.  
Right on the top of his bag. Leaning over starting to make him queasy (which doesn’t bode well for reading attempts), he pulls it out and straightens up.  
He turns it over in his hands a few times, until his stomach settles. He’s fine. Just a few more minutes before the medicine works… probably anyhow.  
He flips through the pages, still waiting for his breathing to calm as well.  
Oh.  
He remembers this words… in a half remembered haze of childhood and tracing those words on his limbs and his walls. With his eyes, and markers, and pencils. On the inside of his eyelids. Carved into the air about his bed as he repeated them to himself.  
‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’  
Reading those words again makes his hands shake like they had when he first read them… with Mr. Spider fresh in his nightmares. Still missing the life he could never have with his parents.  
Jon fumbles for a pen.  
He traces them again on his forearm.  
Poorly written, of course. Hands far from steady with the rocking of the train and the rocking of his stomach and the rolling of his world after the day he’s had. But he is once more too tired to focus on anything much, so he tucks his book away again, and shoves the pen in his pocket.  
He tucks himself up against Martin again, using an old jumper as a blanket. He knows he is taking a bit of a liberty, but he buries his face in Martin’s neck and breathes deeply. He’s asleep again in moments. 

The trip isn’t eventful. Lots of track clicking past. Lots of drowsy hours. A disappointing sandwich and a tasteless cup of tea. Jostled shoulders. Cramped restrooms. Cramped necks. Jon’s bad leg protesting the seating arrangements. Then the slightly uncomfortable walk to the safe house. Weighed down with hasty shopping and their lumpy bags. Jon limping more heavily by the time they drag themselves over the threshold. 

In the domestic bliss, time stretches. Lazy afternoons on the couch Jon and Martin entwined stretch into years in the golden light of afternoon. Two weeks of cups of tea. Of trips to the store. Of statements that Jon goes through way too fast, try as he does to ration them. Frantic phonecalls to Basira as Jon can’t make the trip to town anymore. More cuddling on the couch. Bickering over who does the dishes, over who makes the best eggs. Over what to have for dinner. Discussions of what counts as a sandwich and whether cereal is a soup. Jon being appalled that Martin eats cereal from the box directly with a spoon. Martin being horrified that Jon eats dry cereal from a bowl with a glass of milk. Playing footsie through dinner. “Yes Martin, another soup. Means less cooking.” Sloppy kisses over glasses of wine. Jon being too dizzy to go on walks. Jon retracing Frank Herbert’s words on to his arm. Over. And over. And over again.  
“I must not fear…”  
“I must not fear…”  
“I must not fear…”  
“I must not fear…”

Until a package arrives. 

It’s unassuming and labeled in Basira’s careful penmanship. If Jon expects to see tear-staines over a lost partner, he doesn’t see them.  
Martin kisses him soundly, and leaves to take pictures of good cows.  
Jon has been tucked up on the couch. Under a thick blanket. Finally in better spirits now that he has statements again, ready …so ready for his limbs to feel like his again.  
He tastes copper as he started to read. The words don’t sit right in his mouth. Before he can even properly start… before his mind is lost to him, he can feel the wrongness building. And when the betrayal occurs, he can’t find it in him to be surprised or hurt. All he can feel is a hollow fear…. a hungry fear. Gaping and endless. Tearing into his skin as he tears at his clothes, his skin, the statement that does not belong to Hazel Rutter and has nothing to do with a fire. Aside from the fire in his throat and in his hand, and leaping from mark to mark as Jon learns what they actually are. A map of manipulation. A tool to make the actual tool. The wood and hammer and nails that make him the door. The door that he… that he. “ Come to us in your perfection.   
  
Bring all that is fear and all that   
is terror and all that is the awful   
dread that crawls and chokes and   
blinds and falls and twists and   
leaves and hides and weaves and   
burns and hunts and rips and bleeds   
and dies!   
  
Come to us.   
  
I-“  
“I…” Jon chokes. His eyes sliding helplessly over the room. Over many tokens of a happy life that he is never going to have. Because of this…. this… he can’t even call it a betrayal. His entire life has lead to this. Every unhappy moment. Every instinct he has ever had. Every poor choice. Every step another step towards the inevitable. His eye catches on a familiar cover. Somehow still glossy. Despite Jon having carried it around like a safety blanket for the last few weeks. And he catches those smudged and traced over words on his arm and he tears at himself, trying to stop.  
“I…”  
He chokes again. Around those last few words. The words that will wrench the thunder from the sky and rend it asunder.  
“I…”  
He breathes. Possibly for the first time since his hands ghosted over the unassuming manilla folder.  
“‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’”  
His vision cuts out. He must have stood at some point, because he is falling. Stings cut. Nothing to manipulate. The puppet is broken. 

He wakes with a head full of cotton, but a heart devoid of fear. There is a clarity in his limbs. But exhaustion sits heavily on his chest. He feels… clear. And real. And… like utter shit.  
But the arms around him are solid and warm and smell like tea and toast and all the good things Jon can think of in the world. And even if Jon could bring himself to move… he wouldn’t have dreamt of doing so.  
There is burnt ink in the air.  
“Wha’?” Marble-mouthed. Heavy with the exhaustion of years of poor sleep, of running and fearing and the adrenaline crash of something horrifying being…over.  
“It’s alright, Jon. Everything’s fine. I…. I don’t know how you did it, but you stopped reading… and I burned it. It’s gone. We’re okay.”  
And Jon isn’t sure he understands…. but he doesn’t care. Because he is not afraid, and Martin told him that everything is okay. And he thinks… just Maybe. Just… maybe… that it might be. 

He lets himself be tucked in. He lets himself sleep. 

Jon takes up calligraphy. He hates it. Utterly despises it… but he becomes decent enough to write one thing for their mantel. In the safe house. Miles away from fear and Jonah Magnus… if the bastard is even still alive…  
Framed in gold, traced out in neat and flowing calligraphy:  
‘I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.’ - Frank Herbert, Dune.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I am still accepting bingo prompts on tumblr! (I am captaincravatthecapricious there as well). Pick a prompt from the card and a character and let me know if you want art of fic! (I am much faster at art). I have several outlined that I need to write, and I will get to those... soonish? We will find out. If you enjoy leave me a comment and let me know! Have an excellent day and I hope 2021 treats you well!


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